Between the Two of Us
by TheFoxinator
Summary: Angel and Spike aren't going to just sit by and let The Immortal run off with their girl. Between the two of them they're sure to prove, once and for all, whom Buffy belongs with. Spuffy. Bangel. Buffy/other. Starts after Ats 5.20 "The Girl in Question" and continues post series, based on season eight.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: In no way does anything of Joss' belong to me. (Is there even a point in putting this shit here? You know this.)**

**A/N: Look, a thing with chapters! Yeah, the lack of the Complete sign is not an accident this time, it's for real. What now?**

**Credit and love to MaireAilbhe for coming up with the title. **

* * *

"Well," says Spike, peering into the box on Angel's desks, "it's all very…" he seems to search for an adjective for a moment, "shiny," he decides on.

It's an underwhelming but inarguably accurate choice.

"Yeah," says Angel at his side. "Pretty heavy too." He gives the box a light push and it doesn't budge.

They stand in silence for a minute, eyes fixed on the contents of the box. Angel sticks his hand in to fiddle with some of the jewellery. They probably should have asked for the actual jewellery boxes, instead of just having the big shipping box filled with loose rings and necklaces and bracelets and watches, now that he thinks about it, but at least the earrings are grouped together. Speaking of which…

He grabs ones of the larger earrings boxes and opens the lid to find five diamond studs stuck into the velvet. "It is five, right?" he asks. He knows he asked before, when they were deciding what to do with the diamonds in the first place, but now that they're all here, set in the jewellery and waiting to be shipped to the other side of the planet, he feels unsure again.

"Five," agrees Spike. "Three on the right and two on the left. I think."

"No, that sounds right," Angel nods. It does sound right. And just because it probably would have also sounded right if Spike had said it the other way around doesn't mean it isn't. He closes the box and places it back into the stack of other earring boxes, opens one of the smaller ones to confirm that some of them are sorted into twos, and picks out an incredibly flashy bracelet to study instead. "You do think she'll like them, right?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely," Spike says. But he says it a little too quickly and Angel can't help but feel that he's trying to assure himself too. And Spike seems to notice that, if his expression is anything to go on. He grimaces a little and stares harder at the bracelet Angel's holding. "I mean, they're…" he seems to fail to come up with a word to describe what they are and trails off awkwardly.

Angel puts two fingers through the middle of the bracelet and spins it around so that the diamonds catch the very very filtered light and glitter, creating bright reflections across the desk and on Spike's T-shirt and all around the office.

"We picked them out," Spike says suddenly, and a little too loudly.

Slightly startled, but only slightly because Angel doesn't really get fully startled, nope, he turns to Spike and looks attentive.

"We picked them out ourselves," says Spike firmly. "She'll like them."

"Yeah," says Angel. He lets it process for a moment and brightens. "Yeah. She'll like them. We have good taste."

"Damn right we do."

"Well," Angel corrects himself, "you don't—"

"Hey!"

"—but we know how to pick out some jewellery. Just because we're, you know, men and all, that doesn't mean we can't notice and understand what women like."

"I've got better taste than you do, pillock."

Really? Spike thinks he can argue this? _Spike?_ Angel tosses the bracelet back into the box and fixes his eyes squarely on Spike. "You've changed clothes, what, once in the last seven years? And how long were you wearing that same outfit before then? Twenty years? Thirty?"

Spike turns away from the desk, though he leaves on hand still resting there, and he turns to face Angel, nose to… about chin. "It's called having a style," he says hotly.

"No," says Angel. He folds his arms. "It's called going out of style and being outdated. And kind of gross."

Spike throws his shoulders back and glares at Angel.

Angel glares back at Spike.

There's about a full thirty-seconds of some really top-notch glaring on the part of both parties, and a little bit of glowering thrown in for good effect, before Spike says, "Let's ask Harmony."

"Fine."

They turn and make it about three steps closer to the door before Angel remembers, "No, wait, she went to lunch."

"Oh," says Spike. "Balls."

Angel backtracks to the desk and leans against it heavily, arms still folded. He sighs.

Spike turns back to face him, hands on his hips, but stays where he is a few feet away.

Angel stares out the window and at the buildings across the street. He never has bothered to learn what goes on in those buildings. He doesn't know if there's more evil over there, and, if there is, whether it's the sort of alternate dimension, eternal evil they've got here, or if it's just the average, run-of-the-mill corporate America evil.

Spike studies the weapons on the wall.

Angel scratches his arm, idly, through his shirt sleeve and then, abruptly, breaks the silence. "But Buffy will definitely like her present?"

"Oh yeah," Spike is quick to agree. "Love it."

"And you don't—" Angel cuts himself of to think his sentence through. He's got to remember to think before he speaks, or the words might come out all wrong or in a weird order and make him not seem very cool. "You don't think it's… you know… too many?"

"No, not at all," says Spike.

"Because there's probably about sixty necklaces in there."

Spike nods, frowns a moment, and then decides, "Well, she can share with Dawn if she wants to."

"Right!" says Angel. "Right."

Spike nods firmly and the silence falls again.

Maybe Buffy could also share with her new Slayer friends. There's a lot of girls out there that she's now in charge of. Maybe she could reward them in some way.

But she wouldn't. She can't. Because it's a present from them. Her true loves and everything and she's their girl, even if she thinks she's The Immortal's girl at the moment. But she'll value their present, and not just because it's very shiny, but because it was sent with love.

"Where the hell did you get all those diamonds anyway?" Spike asks. He didn't wonder before? When they were first deciding what to do with all of them in the first place?

"De Beers is a client."

"Huh," says Spike. He takes the three steps back to the desk to peer into the box once more. Then he lifts his head to look back at Angel, who is in turn looking at him. "That does make a lot of sense, doesn't it?"

"Explains their advertising success."

Spike nods and looks back at all the sparkling jewels and silver chains and gold settings, looks back at them with a somewhat blank expression that slowly turns into one of cautious thought. "We're not, um… We're not… selling Buffy's soul to them or anything, are we?"

"No," says Angel quickly, before he even bothers to let the thought sink in. He then takes a moment to think on it, to think on what they could be doing to their girl. "Well… at least not any more than any woman who's gotten an engagement ring in the last eighty years."

"Good," says Spike. He nods. "Good."

"Yeah," says Angel, a little slowly. "It's real good."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Looks like it's gonna be one chapter a day. So... here's today's. **

* * *

"What rhymes with 'breath?'" Spike asks, breaking the silence after almost a full fifteen minutes.

Angel hadn't even thought it was possible for Spike to be quiet for that long. Although, he had been muttering under his breath most if the time, so maybe it didn't quite count, but he had been a while since he'd actually tried to gain attention from saying anything, which was kind of impressive. Spike's always trying to get attention. And their plan kind of relies on it, actually.

"Death," says Angel, before bothering to think about _why _Spike needs rhyming words, or why they're spending time down in Spike's shitty, undersized apartment instead of out on the streets and fighting with the straggler demons from Wolfram and Hart's army while they wait for the Hyperion to be repaired after the dragon had smashed it up. "No! Use a better word. Use… um…"

What the hell else rhymes with breath?

Meth? Macbeth?

"No, that's good," says Spike. "Death. Can work with death." A look of intense concentration crosses his face (Angel had forgotten Spike was physically capable of a look of even regular levels of concentration) and he resumes scratching his pen against the notepad on his knees. Concentrating isn't really a Spike thing to do, so Angel leaves him in peace.

Besides, he may never trust Spike, not enough to actually use the word, but Spike's dedicated to their mission and he's got his way with words, once he can think of them.

And Buffy deals with death a lot. She'll probably like it.

She's probably also like it if Angel could just get her nose right.

Spike's bed (a terrible imitation of a real bed by someone who had never tried to share a mattress, or possibly even sleep on one) and the floor surrounding it are covered in Angel's crumpled, failed attempts to capture his true love _just right_. And over on the sofa, Spike's aggressive pen work and low grumbling seem to indicate that he's not doing much better.

The quiet they sit in for the next ten minutes is more an approximation of quiet than true quietness. Even though the building is normally almost silent (why they let Spike move in, Angel will never know), besides the scratching and grumbling, they can also hear the street and the late-afternoon traffic from down here, louder than usual, even though they'd made sure all of Spike's windows are closed. Apparently no one else in the neighbourhood needs to concentrate. There's yelling in Korean upstairs and the elderly woman across the hall seems to have chosen this exact time to rearrange her living room set, slamming things around and loudly scraping heavy furniture across the floor.

Angel tears another failed attempt at recreating Buffy in graphite from his sketchbook. He crumples the drawing in his fist and throws it across the room. Though, being that his projectile is, after all, just a sheet of paper and the room is too small for there to be any real build-up of speed even if it had made it past foot of the bed, the effect is minimal.

Angel sighs, rubs his eyes, and asks, "What does Buffy's nose look like?"

Spike goes, "Mm," in thought and then outlines an upside-down, misshapen question mark in the air with his finger.

It doesn't help.

Angel puts down his pencil, aware of and resigned to the fact that it will disappear and he will need to get a new one when he sits back down, and heads to the fridge. One of the discarded papers sticks to the bottom of his foot and he pries it loose and drops it into the table when he passes it.

He opens the fridge. At least they have beer. If they fail at everything else today, at least they remembered to stock up on beer.

Angel twists off the bottle cap (even though it's not actually a twist-off) and tosses in on the counter to clutter with all the other caps and empty bottles that have been collecting there, probably since Spike moved in.

"Hey," says Spike, "bring me one."

"No," says Angel. He's already two steps too far to reach the fridge. He's not going back just because Spike says to. "Get it yourself."

"Fine then," says Spike, "I'll just get up and stop working. Break my concentration."

Angel glares at him.

Spike raises his eyebrows.

Shaking his head, Angel turns back around, yanks the refrigerator door open harshly and grabs another beer. Like Spike actually has concentration to break. Please. He hands Spike the bottle, moves the destroyed papers over to the mismatched end table next to the sofa, and sits down. "How much do you have?"

Spike looks at him from the corner of his eye, barely turning his head. He taps his thumb against the neck of the glass and then, with a groan, knocks all the papers from his lap and onto the floor with the dramatic flair of an angst-filled teenager. He slumps back into the cushions, legs spread, his knee jostling against Angel's slightly. "Nothing," he says. He tears the cap off the beer and pitches it across the room so that it flies past Angel's face and bounces across the kitchen linoleum before disappearing under the fridge. "I've got nothing."

"Well," says Angel, as Spike chugs half his bottle in one long swallow, "we've just got to keep working. Prove to Buffy that she's meant to be with _us _and not The Immortal." His face twists reflexively in disgust from the taste of the name on his tongue. He really does hate that guy. "Besides… she'll probably appreciate the effort."

"Angel, we've—" Spike is cut off by a particularly loud crashing noise from across the hall. They wait for any sounds of pain or distress, but there's just a lot of grumbling, so Spike continues, "we've been at it for three days. All the effort in the world's not gonna suddenly throw her into our arms if it's not something she's ever going to see." He kicks a little at the papers on the floor with the toe of his boot. "We've got nothing to give her right now. Bloody awful poet is right."

"Yeah," says Angel. He sighs and slumps into the armrest. "We can't compete with that jackass." He sips his beer.

Spike squirms beside him, pressing himself even further into the couch cushions and settling into more of a slouch that he'd been in before, which is impressive. He taps his half-empty bottle against his knee. "We'll just… we'll think of something else. Prove to her that we love her the most some other way."

"Yeah," says Angel, staring blankly at the pale blue wall and that awful, tiny bed. Really, how do you even call that thing a bed? "No!" he sits up straight.

"No?"

"No, we don't need a new plan. We're not going to let The Immortal bully us from the other side of the planet. We're good at this! You're—you're good at this."

"You really think so?" Spike perks up a bit, still wary though. His insecurities apparently at war with his enormous, praise-hungry ego.

"Yeah. Sure. And we can do this."

"And 'Slayer' and 'razor' can rhyme, yeah?"

"If you say them like that. But, look," says Angel. He sets his beer down on top of the pile of papers on the side table and gets ready to inspire the creativity back into the both of them. "We just… we have to keep focusing." That didn't go so well. He tries again, "It's _Buffy_."

Much better.

"Yeah," says Spike. He lifts his chin up. "The Immortal can't love her the way we do. Bet he hasn't even _tried _writing poetry about her. She belongs with us and we can prove it. We've just gotta sit down, not get distracted, and show her."

"Exactly."

There's another loud, long scraping sound from the other side of the wall, a crash, and a muffled thump.

"Think we should go help Mrs. Konikoff?" Spike asks.

Angel grabs his beer, gulps down the rest of it, slaps it back down on the table, and leaps to his feet. They've got an old lady to save from some furniture. "Yep. Let's go."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: So, I'll be consistent about posting one chapter a day. What time of day, though? Who knows. It's a surprise. (Without any stray arms.) **

* * *

"Who died and made you John Cusack?" Spike scowls at him from across the hood of the car.

"Well," Angel says, "I'm taller."

"So?"

"So I can get more… range." He holds his arms up over his head. "And then there's more… the sound can travel farther… further? Um, because it's… up."

Spike stares at him uncomprehendingly. "What?"

It's all very clear in his head, clear to the 'why even bring it up, Spike?' point, like with most things, but he's kind of lacking the words to explain it properly. "Look, it's just science, okay? So shut up and help me put this thing together."

"Why aren't you just looking at the pictures?"

"I _am _looking at the pictures!" Why did he think Spike would be any help with this? As far as he knows, Spike's only used the telephone once in his life. It's not like video game rehab-turned-addiction is going to suddenly make him adept at understanding the inner workings of new stereo equipment.

He really should have bought Spike that book. Angel's Italian is rusty and about a century out of date and it's never had anything to do with putting a boombox together before, so these instructions aren't exactly making the most sense right now.

Angel puffs out a breath then looks at Spike.

The other vampire's stopped even pretending to help and is staring up at the building beside them, probably still trying to guess which apartment is Buffy's like they had been earlier. They probably should figure that out before they move any further with their seduction plans.

They can count the windows. Buffy's apartment 35, so if they know how many windows belong to each unit… they can call Andrew and tell him to look out the window and wave down to show them which one is theirs.

"Angel," Spike says, at just the exact moment Angel looks back down at the instructions.

Angel ignores him. One of them has to stay focused right now if they actually want to succeed at all here and it would be insane of him to expect it to be Spike, the vampiric embodiment of the short attention span. It's frustrating, but he just has to keep in mind why they're out here so soon after sunset, standing around a rental car in a little parking lot off the side of a Roman street and that it's the same reason they managed to make it through all that time they spent trapped together on the ship that brought them here now that Wolfram and Hart's jets are completely out of the question and just a fond, speedy memory.

"Angel," Spike says again. "_Angel." _

Jaw tight, Angel looks up. "What?"

"We don't have any CDs."

Angel stare at Spike as he lights up a cigarette, obnoxiously casual for having just announced such a fatal flaw in their incredibly important plans. They don't have any CDs. They have to have CDs. This plan can't just pull together and work with some unknown Italian radio station! Who ever heard of winning a girl with commercials? "Dammit," says Angel.

"Right," says Spike. "Well, you stay here and work… that out," he waves his cigarette at the more or less pieced together but stubbornly non-functional stereo, "and I'll drive back over to the record store and get something."

"No," says Angel.

"Well, you want to just hold that up, impress her with your assembly skills? That's sure to win her back."

"No, I should go to the store too."

"Be faster if you stayed though, wouldn't it?"

He's kind of got a point but… "You'll probably get something she doesn't like.

Spike looks incredibly affronted. He draws his shoulders up and scowls through the smoke that wafts between them. "I've seen your collection, Angelus. You think you can do better?"

"Better than Sid Vicious."

Spike scowls a little more, then tosses his cigarette into the street. "Fine," he says. "Let's agree on something now, then. Save us some time."

"Spike, we've never agreed on anything ever. You'd say the sky was orange just to contradict me."

"Sometimes it's orange," says Spike, ignoring Angel's eyeroll. "And besides, there is one thing we agree on." He lifts his head back up and Angel follows his gaze back to the building and all the windows that could be hiding Buffy from them at this very moment.

"Fine," Angel says. "Nothing with the word 'sex' in the title."

"No Manilow," says Spike.

"Nothing that includes screaming or yelling."

"No Manilow."

"Don't just say the same thing twice like you're winning something. I'm trying to work with you."

"It's an important rule!" Spike insists.

Angel stares at him, unyielding.

"All right," says Spike. "All right. Um… nothing classical. I don't think she's into that."

"Do you know what music she was into, the last time you saw her?" He's only asking because Spike may have discussed music with her more recently. Not because he doesn't know what Buffy's interests are or anything like that. Definitely not.

Spike frowns in concentration. "New Kids on the Block?" he suggests, slowly and with an expression of distaste. The he apparently changes his mind. "No, wait, she didn't like them anymore. I think. But she had a poster. And one of… some other group."

Angel shakes his head. "How does that help us?"

"Hey," Spike snaps, "I'm the one doing all the thinking right now." His hands find his hips and plant themselves there and he leans in closer over the car. "You're in love with her too, why don't you know what she likes?"

Angel folds his arms. "It's not that we… I just… music…" he trails off helplessly.

Spike's attentive gaze falls away from Angel's face, passes idly over the almost-functional stereo, and then back to the cracked ground.

Angel looks up at the building. He unfolds his arms. He folds them the other way.

Spike kicks at the ground, probably at his dropped cigarette though Angel can't see his feet. A chuck of asphalt clatters past the front of the car and skitters into a stop ten feet away. Spike watches its path for a moment even after it's settled ten looks back to Angel. "So, what, 'In Your Eyes' then?"

"I guess," says Angel, shrugging. There are probably worse falbacks.

He leans against the car. He really did think he'd know something. That he'd know some perfect song that would mean something for them and Buffy. Something that The Immortal would never be able to contend with because they _know _her. Because she is _their _girl and some woman-stealing violator asshole can't compete with the bond they have, even if Angel did leave her once, but that was or her own good and—"Rolling Stones."

Spike brightens. "Yeah! That's actually a good call. Any reason or just be—"

Angel cuts him off by grabbing Spike by the front of his shirt and dragging him over the hood of the car, knocking all the electronics and the unhelpful instructions to the ground, and hauls Spike down beside him where he crouches low.

Spike growls. "Wha—"

"Shh," Angel hisses. He peers over the top of the car, just barely clearing the hood and trying not to be seen. Hopefully his hair isn't sticking up too much today.

"Fuck , that's him," Spike says, fortunately keeping his voice low for once. "That bastard! He's been in there the whole time?"

The Immortal stands in the entryway of the building, which they can just make out from their vantage point beside the street. He's holding the door open.

Spike lifts his head up father to see better, clearly going well above what the car could possibly block from The Immortal's field of view if he turned around. Angel yanks him back down.

"Oi!"

"Shut up"

And there she is. The love of their unlives on the arm of some other (other) man. She's all dressed up with her pretty party skirt and her hair put up all fancy and her shiny high heels. She is definitely not going out to fight demons.

The pair leaves Angel's line of vision and this time Angel doesn't drag Spike back down when he gets up a little to watch the two as they walk away.

"Where do you think he's taking her?" Spike asks.

Angel stands up. "I don't know." He glances at the pile of electronic equipment on the ground and pats his pockets.

Spike stands up and leans across the car to watch them around the corner once the building blocks their view. "Love spell," he says. "She's definitely under some kind of love spell. You see how she was walking just now with him? That's not how Buffy would walk if she weren't under some kind of love spell. We better follow them."

Angel finds the keys in his jacket pocket and unlocks the car as quickly as he can. "Yes, obviously." He yanks the door open and gets into the seat, leaning into the passenger's side to try to keep from losing track of Buffy as he fits the key into the ignition. "Hurry up!"


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Not late until the bell rings.**

* * *

"Shit," says Spike, "I think I did something wrong."

Angel looks over at him, a scolding for pouring ingredients in without bothering to actually measure any of them (again) already forming on his tongue, but it dies there when he actually gets a look at Spike and he has to pause his reprimand while his brain catches up to his disbelief. "How could you get that much butter on you?"

"I don't know!" says Spike, defensively. "It just… happened." He's still staring at his hands like he's not quite sure what to do with them, then he reaches out like he actually plans to try wiping them off on Angel's (_very nice_) new shirt.

Angel shoves him into the edge of the sink.

"You guys," Andrew whines from the archway where he stands, nervously wringing the oven mitts in his hands. Angel's not sure why he hasn't put them on yet. The fourth batch is almost ready to come out of the oven and the sooner they pull those out, the sooner they can get the fifth one in and the more cookies will be ready when Buffy gets home. They're supposed to be ready. That's kind of the whole point. "Guys, she's gonna be back soon."

"Better hurry it up then, huh?" Spike says, struggling for a grip on the faucet handle.

Angel reaches over with a dishtowel to keep his own hands from getting covered in butter and turns the sink on for him, to Spike's obvious disapproval and sneering expression of poorly disguised injured pride.

"I was getting it!"

"Sure."

"Guys!" Andrew raises his voice, which Angel really didn't think he had in him and, judging by his expression, Spike didn't either. "I already told you she's seeing someone."

"The Immortal," Angel mutters darkly.

Spike growls in agreement as he scrubs his hands.

The amount of hate that courses through Angel's body at merely stating his name, or hearing him talked about however indirectly, is indescribable and almost enough to make him question how well-attached his soul is at the moment.

"Yeah, The Immortal, and it's one-thirty, and they're probably gonna be back soon." Andrew takes a step farther into the kitchen, even though it's small and already pretty crowded between Angel, Spike, and all their baking supplies. "So, it's cool that you guys are really into the treat-making, even if it's for some weird cookie fetish thing—"

"It's not a fetish!" Angel tells him. Seriously, why do people keep thinking that? Spike had even asked him the same thing when Angel told him the plan. "It's an analogy—"

"—But you already made almost a hundred cookies in three different kinds and Buffy's happy with The Immortal right now, so it's not really cool that you keep showing up and stuff and maybe you guys should back off a little."

"Yeah, but The Immortal's just some mysterious, possibly evil jerk with a history of violence. Just because they write about him in books doesn't mean she can really know the guy. Not like we know her."

"He's got her under a love spell, you know," Spike says. He shuts off the sink and snatches the dishtowel from Angel's hands to dry himself off. "And he's out there, right now, violating _our _girl."

"Yeah, that's not… possessive," says Andrew. "Um, also, is this like a package deal thing? Or are you a tag-team?"

"What?" asks Spike.

"Or are all three of you just—"

He's cut off by the simultaneous noises of the oven timer blaring (blaring is the best word for it and Angel would love to have a talk—the kind with fists—with whatever dumb Italian company created this thing) and the front door of the apartment opening.

Andrew shoves his oven mitts at Angel and bolts out of the kitchen. "Buffy!" Even his yell is whiny.

Angel takes a moment to realise he actually took the oven mitts and that he's holding them pressed against his stomach before he in turn shoves them at Spike and hurries down the hall after Andrew.

"Hey!" Spike calls after them, but he's barely audible over the sound of the oven timer.

"Buffy! Your vampyr ex-boyfriends Angel and Spike are here and they keep using the kitchen and making cookies and—" he skids to a stop and Angel, barely a step behind almost slams into him as they enter back into the front room, "—they only let me help with the frosting."

Buffy stands in the doorway, her coat over her arm and her keys still in her hand. Her hair is curled and twisted up and her dress is black, sequined, and way too short; showing more than The Immortal should be allowed to so much as try to imagine.

She stares blankly at Andrew for a moment and then looks over at Angel. She doesn't smile when she sees him. In fact, her expression barely changes. "Hi," she says.

"Buffy." He smiles at her and is still blocking the hallway when Spike appears behind him.

"_Spike!_ You didn't turn the oven off!" Andrew scolds, emphasizing the vampire's name enough that he looks briefly away from trying to shove past Angel, which isn't going to happen because neither of them is going to get to her first and if one of them does it's going to be him because he was there first before.

Angel elbows Spike, trying to keep him back, and accidentally catches him in the face.

Spike steps back, cursing and sputtering.

Angel reaches out to steady him, but as he does Buffy takes a step towards him, so he leaves Spike, turns, and takes a step towards her.

"They won't stop making cookies," whines Andrew.

"Shut up," Spike tells him, hand over his nose and blood pouring down his face.

Angel takes another step, lowers his head to meet her eyes, and turns on the dark and mysterious charm, since she seems extra into that these days. "Buffy."

She takes another step. Then another and another and walks straight past him. No 'hello' kiss or anything. Her expression is blank, but maybe she's just in shock. She'll check on Spike first and then—no, she walks straight past him too.

"Hello, Buffy," Spike says as she passes. He's going for the darker, lower voice thing too. Can they both do that? Spike should have his own thing. Why can't he ever just let Angel have his own thing? He's _always _copying him, taking his things.

Buffy doesn't even hesitate when she walks by them, just brushes past and marches down the hall.

Andrew scrambles after her. "I told them to turn it off!"

Spike holds his bleeding face and looks to Angel. "She's mad, isn't she?"

"I don't—I don't know," Angel admits. There's something… new about her. Or off about her. Different. Whatever it is, he can't quite get a read on her. He heads back into the hall, grabbing Spike by the shoulder and pushing the younger vampire back towards the kitchen in front of him. "Buffy?"

She's turning off the oven when they reach the kitchen and beside her Andrew is fidgeting with the oven mitts once more. "See?" he says, flapping the mitt in the direction of the cookie piles on the table and the splattered ingredients all over everything. "See? They won't stop."

Okay. Maybe they've been overdoing it a little bit. But the cookies—it's an analogy. Andrew wouldn't understand. But Buffy will. She'll get it because… the cookies… and they're done, even if she isn't even if she has to… bake in The Immortal's oven for a little while. But they, he and Spike, are the ones who are going to be eating her.

Not literally.

Except maybe in the sexual way. But still not in the evil, soulless way. And not in the sexual way that leads to the evil, soulless way later either.

But Buffy just stares blankly at the cookie pile while Angel hands the discarded dishtowel, which is now buttery and covered in flour from sitting on the counter, back into Spike's hand to try and stanch the blood flow. Spike leaves bloody fingerprints on Angel's hand when he takes the towel.

Buffy turns her back on the cookies, doesn't even look like she's considering tasting their analogy. She leans aside so Andrew can slip by her without burning her with the latest cookie sheet from the oven. She takes one step closer, clearing the way so he can scrape the only slightly burnt cookies onto the cooling rack.

Buffy stands with her hands on her hips, one leg in front like she's either trying to intimidate someone or show off her very shiny shoes. "Spike, I thought you were dead."

"Aren't I usually?" Spike's voice is muffled by the towel pressed to his nose.

Buffy shakes her head, lips pulled tight, but she seems to fight off an eyeroll and continues on. "I don't really care. Didn't Andrew tell you I'm seeing someone?"

"Well," says Angel. He really hadn't seen this coming. They made cookies! And she's just ignoring them! "See, The Immortal, he's…"

"He's no good for you, baby," Spike puts in. He steps forward to stand at Angel's side, even though he should probably wait in the shadows until his face is actually clean instead of smeared. "Whatever he's up to, we'll save you."

Angel nods emphatically.

"Save me?" Buffy asks.

"We've run into him before," says Angel. "We know what he does. We won't let him keep violating you."

"'Violate?'" Buffy repeats. Her hands tighten towards fists, her eyebrow rises threateningly and her blue eyes go icy cold and very hard. "'Violate?' You follow me around after we've broken up, show up at my apartment, destroy my kitchen, and start throwing accusations at my boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend?" asks Angel. "Boyfriend?"

At the same time, Spike hurries to tell her, "Look, pet, it's not destroyed, not really—"

Buffy shakes her head sharply. "No," she says, so forcefully the both stop talking for a moment. "No." Her voice isn't really Buffy's voice anymore. It's all power and strength. Pure Slayer. "It's over. We're through. Completely. You both need to go now."

"Buy—Buffy—" Spike sounds like he might cry.

"Look, you don't understand," Angel says. He's got to convince her before she does anything stupider than snuggling. "The Immortal, he's not a good guy. He might act cool but he isn't. He's got you under some spell or something and we just need to—"

"I am _not _under a spell." Buffy leans her weight forward without taking another step and thrusts her neck out to meet his gaze. "Look me in the eye and tell me I'm under something. I'm clear. You two are the ones who need help."

It's true. Her eyes are sharp, bright blue and crystal clear and fuming mad.

"But…" says Spike slowly and Angel's pretty sure now that he really might start crying. At least it's not him. Spike's supposed to be the emotional one, it kind of works for him. Angel's the cool one. "We're the ones who love you."

Buffy shakes her head. "I don't care."

He should have some way of responding to that but he doesn't. He's empty. It's not a 'not now' or a 'someday later' or any sort of strangely endearing metaphor for 'in the future.' It's just… over.

"You don't love us?"

"No," says Buffy. "I don't."

"But… he's Angel," says Spike in a smallish voice. He's barely looking at her anymore. He's dropped the ruined dishtowel so it hangs limply in his hand, his shoulders have fallen dejectedly, and his head is turned down so that he has to flick his eyes up to look at her. He seems to be pressed even closer to Angel somehow, though Angel's almost certain he never moved.

"Listen closely, okay? It is over. Over. There's no us. Not in any sense or matchup you two want to make. We are over."

"I don't accept that—" Angel starts, but he pauses briefly when Spike's hand clamps down on his elbow, hard. Not to be distracted he pushes on. "You don't just suddenly not love—Ow, Spike!"

Spike's still looking away brokenly, but he says, firm though disheartened, "It's time for us to go, mate."

"It really is," says Buffy.

Andrew standing behind her with his arms folded might have been more effective if he'd taken his oven mitts off beforehand. But the comicality of Andrew seems to mostly serve at the moment to underscore Buffy's expression, making her intensity all the more... intense.

"Come on," says Spike.

With one last look at Buffy, Angel nods. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

He pushes Spike back out of the kitchen, down the hall, and through the living room to the door where they pause to get their coats. Buffy and Andrew follow them, Andrew stopping to linger by the table next to the hallway and Buffy coming to stand a few feet away from them, her hands quickly finding her hips again.

Spike pulls his coat tightly around him, even though it's hot outside even now that the sun's been down for hours. The air-conditioning (if they have any) is off and he's a vampire so it shouldn't bother him anyway.

Angel tries to think of his best way to persuade Buffy to let them stay, to see reason, to remember what they have, but he comes up blank and shuffles out the door when Spike opens it.

They stand together in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder, and Buffy closes the distance finally. She puts one hand on the doorknob.

"Goodbye, Buffy," says Spike.

She looks at him, briefly, eyes sharp, then nods. "Goodbye, Spike and Angel." Then she shuts the door.

They stare at the wood and at the 35 for a minute, until they can hear Buffy and Andrew retreat back to the deeper parts of the apartment, arguing quietly.

"She is definitely under some kind of mind control," Angel tells Spike. "He's screwed with us _once again_ by going after Buffy and now she's so turned around that she's hardly Buffy any more and that's because that wasn't Buffy at all that was just some other Slayer with a glamour and I can't believe I actually fell for that."

"Buffy's eyes are green," says Spike. He's still staring down, but he nods as Angel's voice winds down from anger to frustrated disbelief. "And she loves you."

Angel sighs, then wonders why he's sighing. They've just been tricked and double-crossed by, somehow, once again, _Andrew_. They've been wasting their time for weeks.

"Dammit!" He kicks at the wall and his shoe goes right through and he's just got to hope that he was close enough to the door that that was Andrew's apartment wall he just damaged and not some random elderly woman's.

"Let's threaten him tomorrow," says Spike.

"Oh yeah," says Angel. "Let's."


	5. Chapter 5

"I liked your planes better," Spike says.

Angel did too. It's a very different environment here. All these other passengers around them, and the pilots who don't have any sort of training in magic to save them in the event of, for example, the wings falling off spontaneously or the engines shutting down mid-flight.

And what happens if they get delayed? Sure, the flight's only supposed to take a little over three hours, and they only left an hour after sunset, but maybe the sun set more slowly than they'd realised and they'll end up combusting while they fly over France.

And they don't have access to the alcohol because they aren't in first class.

"Yeah," says Angel. "Those were better."

"Really were," says Spike.

The old woman in the window seat looks up from her rosary to glare suspiciously at Spike once more, like she hasn't noticed that the vampire beside her has practically pressed himself against Angel in his attempts to put as much distance between them as possible.

It's the hair and the leather. Angel knows it's Spike's thing, but it's not really a very champion sort of look.

Or maybe it's because Spike moved the armrest between them so he can lean ever farther away from the holy object. She's probably not the sort to be accept two men leaning.

Not that he and Spike do that anymore.

Angel stops fiddling with his seatbelt long enough for the flight attendant to walk by without frowning at him. He worries when it's loose, but when he tightens it he starts thinking about being tied up in the seat at the exact moment he could jump out mid-tailspin and save his own life.

Spike shifts his shoulders, bumps into Angel, and shifts again so they aren't touching as much. He scowls at the chair in front of him, even though he'd fit just fine in his seat if he didn't have to sit on the side of it.

Angel picks at his seatbelt, accidentally undoes it again, and snaps it back closed quickly.

"Scotland?" Spike says again suddenly, pretty much out of the blue but he's been saying it out of the blue for the last day and a half (since they intimidated the info on the real Buffy's whereabouts out of Andrew) and there's not much blue left for him to come out of.

He also has a point.

Scotland's probably the last place on Earth they'd have thought of to search for Buffy. Angel might have even checked some places not on Earth first.

It doesn't have enough sun to appeal to his image of Buffy, but it has too much sun to be the sort of opposite-to-the-expect, secret underground (not literally, though, because there was apparently yet another Buffy who was literally underground) hideaway that undercover mental image Buffy would use.

Maybe he should have spoken to the real Buffy more frequently these last few years. He feels like he's barely got a grasp on her these days. Riley, Spike, and now Scotland. He used to know her, didn't he?

But at least he'd been right about her being in Europe. And at least Spike is just as surprised by her current location as Angel is, as he's been announcing repeatedly.

"Maybe we should take her someplace," Spike says. "Once we're reunited and all. Take her away to somewhere nice. She'll like that, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Angel says. "That would be nice." It is a good plan. He was more ready to settle down in Rome than he is in Scotland. And, unless she's gotten a lot of mileage out of these past few months, Buffy hasn't travelled much. It would be fun, him and Spike introducing her to all sorts of new places they'd visited back in the day.

And this time hopefully without killing anybody.

Spike leans down, putting himself back dangerously near the rosary, to drag out the bag he'd manage to cram under the seat in front of him earlier. He opens it and takes out the one of the bags of cookies from the top.

Angel would tell him to leave them alone, since they're for Buffy, but the bag is probably about to burst open and the only things in there that aren't Ziplock bags of cookies are a single extra T-shirt and Spike's video game thing, which is all he owns.

They can give the rest of them to Buffy, along with everything else they tried and failed to send her earlier, once they're reunited with the love of their lives.

xxxxxxx

Xander meets them near the baggage claim with a hand-written sign on a regular piece of printer paper that reads "Undead Duo."

He could barely look less like the high schooler Angel knew six years ago. He's seen Xander a few times since then, they'd fought some Native American spirits together, buried Buffy, and he'd seen him briefly after Sunnydale collapsed when he and Dawn and Buffy were running around taking care of what he knows now were the newly-called Slayers. But none of those times had given Angel the impression that what Xander was becoming was this.

He looks… powerful, actually. In a human way, but somehow still powerful. He's bigger, with what might be actual muscles, and his sweater doesn't look like a clown's hand-me-downs. The eye patch is working for him (Angel had forgotten about that, he hadn't asked and had kind of assumed it was just a temporary thing). Xander finally looks like someone who actually has been running into vampire lairs to save people since he was sixteen. He looks like someone who actually belongs serving at Buffy's side. He looks like a soldier.

It's strange how people change like that.

"Well, well," Spike drawls. He slinks toward Xander predatorily. "Looks like the whole army thing took after all."

"Shut up, Spike," Xander says, completely unthreatened. He crumples the paper and tosses it at a nearby trashcan. "Are you guys evil?"

"I'm not evil," Angel tells him. He tries not to let his voice sound upset, but, honestly, why are the Scoobies always thinking he's gone evil? He's rarely evil, and it was only those two times. And that one other time with Faith, but he was faking that one. Like he was faking it the last few months. It's all fake. They don't need to get so judgemental.

Xander looks to Spike. "Is he evil?" Why is he looking to Spike? He trusts Spike more? _Spike? _When did this happen? How did this happen?

"Nah," says Spike, "not right now." Like Angel just goes evil all the time. Seriously, what is with everyone?

"We live with almost four hundred Slayers," says Xander, "so if you start to feel any evil coming on or think about some snacking, just, you know, don't." He grins.

"I'm not evil," Angel says.

"Fine. Grab whatever needs grabbing and we can get going." He gestures toward the carousel in the background. The old women who'd been sitting next to Spike is hovering as close as she can to where the bags drop without actually crawling onto the conveyer belt.

"We just have the one bag," Angel says. "Andrew said he'd send our things to your place."

"After we got your address out of him," Spike adds. "You really wanted _Andrew _to be the one hiding all the group secrets? Not your best move, Lieutenant."

Xander ignores him. "Sending your things here? As in all your things? As in staying here?"

"We're here for Buffy," says Angel. "We're done waiting around, or leaving."

"I didn't leave," Spike puts in.

"We're ready to stick things out. Together."

"Right," says Xander slowly, like he's not entirely convinced. "Sure." He waves his hand for them to follow him to the door. "Come on."

Angel hangs back a few paces so he can ask Spike in a voice too low for a human to hear, "Is his eye actually gone?"

Spike barely glances at him as he walks by to follow Xander but he nods his head and makes a gesture with his hand like he's forgotten exactly how to make a thumbs-up. "Yeah," he says, just as low. "Priest."

Huh.

xxxxxxx

"Okay," Xander says as his redhead Slayer-turned-driver drives them through the gates of a _castle_. Andrew hadn't mentioned that they are living in a castle. Buffy is living in a castle. "Here's the plan." He twists around in the passenger's seat to look at Angel and Spike, crammed together once again in the backseat. "I'll go talk to Buffy, let her know you're here—"

"She doesn't know?" Spike asks.

"You knew we were coming," says Angel, "why didn't you tell her?"

"Well, see, the two of you have this habit of abandoning her—"

"It was his fault," Spike interrupts, pointing at Angel.

Angel smacks his hand away. How was he supposed to know that Spike was going to burn to death and then become a ghost and then chicken out at the thought of returning? That's all on Spike. Really.

"I didn't 'abandon' her…" Angel starts, but no one is paying attention to him.

The Slayer at the wheel parks them in a barn that seems to be serving as a garage now. She shuts off the engine but neither she nor Xander gets out of the car.

"I didn't tell Buffy because I didn't want to get her hopes up. But, hey, if you two had decided not to show up today after all, believe me when I tell you how much I would have told her what you did. So now you both get to sit here and wait while I tell her what's going on and then she can decide what she wants to do with you. And I don't think I have to tell you how dead you'll be if you bail this time."

"You're at a castle of Slayers," says the girl. "Two vampires won't make it to the gate."

Xander turns his head enough that she's not completely on his blind side. "Thank you, Leah." He grins at her then looks back at Spike and Angel. He smacks the headrest of his seat with his palm. "Okee-dokee. You guys have fun waiting." And with that he climbs out of the car, shuts the door, and heads out of the barn.

Leah turns to face them, gives them a bright and somehow terrifying smile, then turns to follow Xander. As she walks away, Angel can see that her hair is much longer and much more impractical than he'd realised when she was driving.

Spike waits quietly until the door closes behind Leah, then he almost tears the car door off when he violently throws it open to escape. Angel scrambles out after him and begins to pace while Spike leans against the side to the car and digs through his pockets.

"I don't know what he's going to say. It can't be good, though, whatever it is. You know that guy's always had it in for me. Do you know what he's going to say?"

Spike lifts his head just enough to eye him as he thumps a cigarette loose from the package. "Well, it isn't like he's overly fond of me either, so at least don't worry that he's making anything easier on yours truly." He sticks his cigarette between his lips and holds out the pack to Angel in offering.

Angel starts to lift his hand to accept but then drops it so he doesn't interrupt his pacing. He's not in the right place for smoking. It's never really worked to calm him before and right now Xander could be in there with _their _girl, telling her all kinds of skewed things. He could be making them out to be evil, or completely ignoring the whole 'bringing them down from the inside' part of his Wolfram and Hart plan. Buffy might even believe him.

They haven't even spoken to Buffy in almost a year. Spike hasn't seen her since he died and Angel only saw her a few days after that. People change, maybe she thinks they've changed for the worse.

He can't remember the last time he went this long without seeing her, actually. Maybe they haven't ever spent this much time apart since they first met, when she kicked him in the back and he gave her a necklace.

Sure, they lived apart and haven't spoken much, and there'd been fights between them, but their lives did keep crossing. She came down to chase Faith and he came to be at her side when her mother died. They met in the middle when Willow brought her back and she'd come to see him after everything, to tell him that she'd won and what she'd lost.

"She'll be different," says Spike.

God, he really hates it when he does that. Just steals his thoughts. Reads him like he's out there to be read or something. Stupid perceptive Spike.

"Of course she will be."

"Things have changed for her. She's apart from most of the Scoobies, moved across the world."

"She's in charge of a lot more people now and she lives in a castle."

"Exactly."

Angel paces some more.

Spike finishes his cigarette, grinds it out under his boot, and prepares to light a second one.

"You know, that might not even be Buffy he's taking so long to talk to." Okay, it's only been a few minutes but still.

Spike looks away from the flame of his lighter, cigarette still unlit. "Christ, you think so?"

"I don't think we should put it past them. Andrew sending us off on a wild chase. To Scotland! You might have been onto something. Why would Buffy be in Scotland?"

Spike flicks his lighter shut and pulls his unlit cigarette from his mouth to point it at Angel. "See, that's what I've been trying to say! And Andrew could do it. He used to be evil, you know."

"Andrew was evil?"

"Yeah, killed a man and everything."

"Wow, that's… he actually managed to kill someone?"

Spike nods.

"Huh. I didn't think he had that in him." He tries not to sound at all impressed. Because he isn't. There's a man dead because of this but… still… Andrew was able to kill someone.

"Right? It's surprising, isn't it? Doesn't look like he'd have the strength or the stomach for it."

"Yeah." Angel pauses his pacing to put his hands on his hips. "I guess you can't tell with those things." He frowns. "You don't think Xander…?"

"No," says Spike. He's finally gotten his cigarette lit and the word is accompanied with a puff of smoke. "I mean, he might be lying and planning to trap us in here and kill us, but I don't think he's gone evil."

Angel paces for another minute. Even if Xander spins their story and positively as he can, he doesn't know the entire situation. There will be questions. And hopefully Giles isn't here because Angel's still beyond angry with him and if he somehow manages to not bury his fist in the other man's face, he's pretty sure Spike will fill in for him.

He finally comes to lean against the car beside Spike. "I don't know what we're going to say to her. We should have practised this. Maybe made some notes of some ideas or something." And Andrew and that other Slayer still have all the poems Spike wrote too.

At least they can offer her some cookies.

"Yeah," says Spike, "not entirely sure how well I'll do leading with 'sorry I'm not as dead as you thought.'"

"Maybe she'll just be happy and relieved," Angel suggests. "That would work for us. Maybe it'll make her look over the darkness and not calling."

Spike nods. "And we did just barely live through a big battle just a few weeks ago."

"Right," says Angel. "More relief."

"Right." Spike exhales a lungful of smoke. "And she loves us. She'll be happy."

Angel nods again and for a minute watches his own hands as he fiddles with his watch. Idleness. Not nervousness. Definitely just idleness.

They've been spending all this time trying to fight The Immortal and they never even had to. He hasn't even been a threat this whole time. Now all they're up against is Buffy and her feelings.

Not that that will be necessarily easier.

"You, um…" Angel begins and then trails off, not completely sure he wants to give his thought the sort of life that comes with articulating it.

"Hm?" asks Spike.

Angel hesitates a moment more, then asks, "You think Xander would have told us if there was another guy, right? Some other guy. He would have said something. Or that Slayer with all the hair would have, right?"

Spike takes a moment to think on it, but even by the time Angel's finished talking, his face has already taken on a sort of resigned sadness. "No," he says finally. "No, I don't think he'd have said anything."

"Dammit." Angel growls and momentarily considers destroying something. Maybe one of the cars. But it's probably not really Xander's car anyway and it's not like he said Buffy wasn't dating some new guy either, or like he or Spike had even asked.

Angel slumps back against the car.

Spike drops his cigarette down next to the first one and pulls the pack back out for his third. "Guess we'll see," he says.

"I guess so."

It's six cigarettes and a brief cookie break later before the door opens. Angel's worn down the soles of his shoes from pacing the length of the garage over and over, or at least he's pretty sure he has and he doesn't want to look and confirm it because these shoes weren't exactly cheap.

The sun is rising behind her and it casts a halo around the gold mess of her hair. Her clothes are rumpled and there's a little smear of dirt on her left cheek. Without turning away from facing them, she shuts the door behind herself and walks forward.

"Hey," she says. "It's the really real me this time."

Angel knows it's true. He can see it in the way she moves and in her eyes. Her smile is tired but somehow still bright and brilliant and happy to see them. He can smell it in the air around her, something the glamour the Roman Slayer is using lacked. The dirt and the sweat and the effort that make Buffy infinitely more than just some party girl.

It looks like she's walking slowly but she reaches them in half the time it should take her to cross the barn and suddenly she's standing in front of them.

She takes a moment to look at Angel, to just stand there and stare him in the eyes. Basking, like she's said last time. Then she reaches out, her fingers brushing over where his hands are joined together, and she slips her own hand in until they're clasped palm to palm, his fingers tight over her knuckles.

"Buffy, I don't know what you heard…"

"I heard that you lost a lot of friends this last year," she says. Her eyes don't so much as flicker away from his. Her smile stays strong. "And you got in a big fight and then disappeared."

"Right." He breaks the eye contact instead. He looks away, just a little, and by what could easily be chance his eyes momentarily pass over Spike, standing frozen at his side, staring at Buffy with a look that somehow borders between blankness and worship. "Well, we're alive."

Buffy squeezes his hand and tugs him nearer so that he leans over. She loops her other arm around his shoulder and hugs him tightly. "I'm really glad," she says into his cheek. She holds him there and he frees one of his hands so that he can draw it around her waist and return her embrace.

She releases him after a while, though her fingers linger still on his hand. She turns to Spike.

Spike looks at her like he's forgotten everything else in the world, maybe most importantly the cigarette burning between his fingers. He stares at her, lips pulling toward the most small and tentative smile Angel's ever seen.

Buffy looks right back at him like she's never seen anything more amazing in her entire life. Like her prayers have been answered and God has given her the greatest gift she could ask for and he realises that, yes, she really does love Spike. Really, truly, absolutely loves him.

And Angel can't help but wonder if she looked at him like that when he first came back, even when he was vicious and feral and out of his mind? Or if she stared into his eyes the same way when Acathla gaped behind him.

"You're back," Buffy says, the awe in her voice unmistakeable.

"Buffy…" It's the only word Spike seems capable of at the moment, which kind of fits in line with Angel's previous idea on his thoughts.

Spike lifts his hand and his cigarette drops free. He doesn't seem to even notice, just reaches out until he can touch Buffy's shoulder gently, as if he's testing for something. To see if she'll accept his touch or disappear at it, Angel doesn't know.

Without looking away from Spike, Buffy sticks out her boot and stubs out the cigarette under her toe. She lifts her own hand and rests it against Spike's face, her palm lying flat against his cheek and her thumb moving slowly over the sharp shape of the bone. "I missed you so much," she says.

Angel should have called Buffy. Right back at the beginning of everything, he should have called her. He should have picked up the phone as soon as Spike swirled into screaming existence in the middle of his office. He spent all that time thinking he had to keep them apart but it hadn't worked, not in the end, and now they're both here with her between them, one of her hands in Angel's and the other still stroking Spike's cheek. It took them this long to figure out how to win back their girl when all it was was what they'd done a century ago.

Behind Buffy, the door she'd entered from creaks open and another girl steps inside. "Buffy?" she calls.

Buffy's hand drops from Spike's face to his hand when she turns her head around. "Hey! Come here."

"Yes, ma'am," the girl says. _Ma'am_. They're calling her ma'am. Things really are different for Buffy now. "Xander said you were in here." She heads toward them.

The girl is small, about Buffy's size, and Japanese. Judging by her damp hair and overly cute pyjamas, she looks like she's just gotten out of the shower.

She also undeniably radiates Slayerness.

Buffy squeezes Angel's hand and he looks away but he thinks she probably squeezes Spike's too. She lets them go and takes a step back when the girl arrives at her side.

"Satsu, this is Spike and Angel," Buffy says, pointing at each of them as she says their names.

Satsu lifts her hand and gives a little wave. "Hey."

Buffy reaches her arm out and loops it around Satsu's waist like they're close friends. Which is good. She's not as isolated out here as they'd thought. And she should have more friends out here, especially now that she's separated from most of the other Scoobies.

"Guys, this is Satsu," says Buffy, "my girlfriend."

* * *

**The End**


End file.
